From Operational Manager to Strategic Thinker

Overview

The intent of this seminar is not to train participants to be strategic planners to their organizations. Rather, the focus in on helping them to develop a strategic mindset for their particular work units so that they can add value to their organizations from within their work units as well as in their interactions with other work units. Developing a strategic mindset will also help prepare participants for higher levels of responsibility in ther organizations over time.

Benefits

From Operational Manager to Strategic Thinker

How You Will Benefit? You will:

Understand the difference between opreational management and strategic thinking

Understand what is strategy and how strategic thinking can add value to your organization

Learn a structured, fourr-step approach to strategic thinking

Learn how to apply this approach to different types of organizations - commercial and non-commercial - and to different levels within organization -corporate level, business unit level, functional level

Understand where mission and vision fits into strategic thinking

Understand the challenges of straategy execution and the key requirements for successful strategy execution

What

From Operational Manager to Strategic Thinker

What You Will Cover

Strategic thinking - formulating strategies that contribute to the success of the organization

But what is strategy?

Exploring the concept of strategy in different contexts - military context, sports and games, commercial businesses, public sector and non-profit organizations

Understanding the situations where strategy is required as opposed to just plans or tactics

Defining strategy as deliberate choices or decisions to achieve success for the organization within the context of such situations

But decision on what? What are the key questions to answer in formulating strategy?

Formulating the Strategic Questions Answer

Understand that the strategic questions to answer are different for different types of organization (commercial, public sector, non-profit) and for different levels within an organization (corporate, business unit and functional levels)

Applying the three-step method to identifying the relevant questions to answer in formulating strategy for an organization and for a unit within that organization

Applying the method to commercial and non-commercial organizations

Once the strategic question to answer have been identified, fourth step is to find the best answer to these questions - how to do this?

Anwering the Strategic Questions

The Issue Analysis technique as a structured approach to answering the strategic questions identified

Faculty

From Operational Manager to Strategic Thinker

Faculty Spotlight

Alfred Chan

Alfred is Executive Director of Imperial Consulting in Singapore. He has been in management consulting for over 20 years, with Arthur D. Little, Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), Arthur Andersen and KPMG, in the last two firms as a Partner and a Director respectively. Prior to management consulting, he was in investment banking for five years, with Morgan Guaranty (JP Morgan) and DBS Bank.

Alfred’s work in management consulting has focused on strategy, financial, privatization and organizational advisory services. He has led projects in strategic and business planning, market research, project feasibility analysis, design and implementation of performance management systems (balanced scorecard, EVA), financial modeling and analysis, business valuation, cost and pricing analysis, financial restructuring, industry reform and regulation, corporatization and privatization, and organizational restructuring. In investment banking, he was involved in a range of capital market and corporate finance advisory work.

Alfred has an MBA (Finance Major) from Columbia Business School in New York where he graduated top of his graduating class. He also has a BE (Hons) in electrical engineering from the University of Melbourne, earned under a Colombo Plan Scholarship. Alfred has also completed Morgan Guaranty’s nine-month Commercial Bank Management Program in New York and attended the Kaplan and Norton Balanced Scorecard Certification Bootcamp.

Apart from running Imperial Consulting in Singapore, Alfred also conducts training for the company’s clients in his two areas of expertise: strategy and finance. Finance courses he trains in include “Finance for Non-financial Managers” and “Financial Analysis and Valuation”. Strategy courses he conducts include “Strategic Planning for Business Leaders” and “From Operational Manager to Strategic Thinker”. Alfred also conducts the Accounting, Finance and Strategy modules of "5-Day "MBA" Workshop" as well as programs in Critical Thinking.